In the early '80s, jazz great Dave Brubeck slipped onto the UC Santa Cruz campus for a visit that would remain a nearly invisible slice of university history—until the pianist and composer's recent death.

Kimberly Bautista--a 2009 graduate of the Social Documentation Program at UC Santa Cruz--has been named the winner of the 2012 HBO and National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) Documentary Film Award.

For some it was the distance from home, others the redwoods, and still others the chance to work in computer game design. Tuesday, 15 UC Santa Cruz students, all graduates of San Fernando High School, had the chance to tell one of the people responsible for their matriculation how they ended up at UCSC.

In 1986, a 5-foot-11 junior from UC Santa Cruz became the NCAA's lead scorer. John Saintignon beat out bigger and better-known players like UCLA's Reggie Miller and All-American Len Bias. He edged out hundreds of Division I and Division II players, and became the only Banana Slug before or since to hold the title.

Allan M. Malz, senior analytical advisor in the Markets Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will give a free public lecture on “Liquidity, Leverage and the
Financial Crisis” Wednesday, November 14th, from 4-5:30 p.m. at UCSC.

Alan Richards, UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus of environmental studies, will speak on “Petrol Politics in the Wake of Arab Spring” at the next "pub science talk" Tuesday, November 13 at the Red Restaurant and Bar, in downtown Santa Cruz.

“The very first day of shooting the film there was a huge explosion,” said Gustavo Vazquez, UCSC professor of Film and Digital Media. Vazquez was high up in the Peruvian Andes filming "Playing with Fire," a kaleidoscopic portrait of the small town of Celendín...

Is philosophical inquiry bound by history, geography or culture? Should the philosopher be responsible to the public? On October 20, UCSC will host a free public conference examining the relationship between philosophy and its multicultural context.

With the state and national election less than four weeks away, several election forums and events are scheduled at UC Santa Cruz. In addition, the campus has prepared a comprehensive web page with information on candidates, state ballot initiatives, and deadlines for registering to vote.

Two senior UC Santa Cruz officials will visit Harbor High School Thursday, October 18 as part of Achieve UC, a state-wide program to show high school students how they can achieve a University of California education.

After two acclaimed novels about the Mexican immigrant experience, UCSC alumna Reyna Grande is now celebrating the release of her new memoir--"The Distance Between Us"--with a reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Oct. 14.

Private donors gave nearly $24 million in gifts and pledges to support UC Santa Cruz in fiscal year 2011-2012, an increase of 9.4 percent from the previous year. Alumni giving roughly tripled -- from $2.5 million to $7.3 million, and alumni giving increased from 11 percent of the total to 30 percent.

“I often say, only partly facetiously, that I have the best job in Washington D.C.,” notes UC Santa Cruz alumna Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, an advisory committee to the White House on cultural issues.

The UCSC Arts Division’s first concert of the academic year kicks off on October 19 with "Women Over the Edge," an evening of song that deliberately blurs the boundaries between classical and popular music.

How does a 24 year-old fisherman with a thick New York accent become a Shakespearean actor?
You can find out at Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s third annual fall benefit show--supporting the company’s education and internship programs—on Sunday, October 14.

Saúl I. Maldonado, a third-year doctoral student in the education department at UC Santa Cruz, has been awarded an internship with the American Evaluation Association's Graduate Education Diversity Internship program.

Chancellor George Blumenthal celebrated the achievements of this still-young university and described its regional and global impacts during a "State of the Campus" presentation to campus and community leaders.

UC Santa Cruz students are scheduled to begin moving into university housing on Wednesday, September 19, in anticipation of the 2012-13 school year. The first day of instruction in the fall quarter is Thursday, September 27.

The sixth annual Founders Celebration Friday, October 12 will feature a free public lecture by Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom, followed by a gala dinner honoring Rees, Gordon and Betty Moore, George and Gail Michaelis-Ow, UCSC alumnae Shannon Brownlee, and UCSC distinguished professor Gail Hershatter.

"Imperial Silence: Una Ópera Muerta"--a bilingual multi-media opera by UCSC assistant professor of film and digital media John Jota Leaños--will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, September 14-16.

A memorial celebrating the life of UC Santa Cruz Professor Emeritus of Psychology M. Brewster Smith is set for Sunday, September 30, 2012, from 2-4 p.m. in the La Feliz Room at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Lab.

UCSC”s Digital Arts and New Media program (DANM) will showcase campus projects at the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial—an international festival featuring work at the intersection of art and technology—that takes place in Silicon Valley and around the Bay Area, September 12 to December 8.

A new study by two UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest that a thriving sea otter population that keeps sea urchins in check will in turn allow kelp forests to prosper and help reverse a principal cause of global warming.

The UC Santa Cruz Arts Division announced today that John Weber—currently Dayton Director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York—has been hired to guide the development of a new institute of the arts and sciences.

A group of internationally renowned scholars will convene to explore and rethink aspects of modern Chinese culture, religion, and society from various Eurasian and global perspectives on September 7-8 at UC Santa Cruz.

Training for beginning organic farmers on the Central Coast will get a significant boost from a three-year U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at UC Santa Cruz.

M. Brewster Smith, professor emeritus of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, whose research and testimony contributed to the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned school segregation, died Saturday in Santa Cruz.

Apple's release of its "Mountain Lion" operating system is drawing attention to the real thing prowling just a few miles from the company's headquarters. Since 2008, UCSC researchers have captured 36 mountain lions as part of the UCSC Puma Project to better understand the cats' physiology, behavior, and ecology.

A new study by scientists at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Santa Cruz suggests that changes in world ocean chemistry is one potential cause of the cooling trend of the past 45 million years.

UC Santa Cruz wildlife biologists Yiwei Wang and Rachel Wheat will hold a free public lecture on Alaskan wildlife and the importance of salmon to the Alaskan ecosystem, Monday, June 25th from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the UCSC Arboretum.

Saturday, June 23, from noon until 2 p.m., a bevy of award-winning poets will read their work at “A Garden of Poetry and Music,” with piano music and vocals by Colin and Sheila Hannon in the historic Alan Chadwick Garden.

A continued increase of Lyme disease in the United States, once linked to a recovering deer population, may instead be explained by a decline of the red fox, UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest in a new study.

UC Santa Cruz professor Julie Guthman's latest book, Weighing In, Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (2011, University of California Press) has been selected by the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) for its annual book award.

Commencement exercises at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are scheduled for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, June 15-17, hosted by UCSC's 10 colleges, as well as the graduate division and the Baskin School of Engineering.

Grupo Folkórico Los Mejicas, the student-organized folklórico dance group at UC Santa Cruz, celebrates its 40th anniversary with a special spring festival.
Performances are Friday, June 8th from 7-10 p.m. and Saturday June 9th from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the UC Santa Cruz Mainstage Theater.

UCSC students will be recognized for their achievements in research and other scholarly activities during the campus's annual Student Achievement Week, scheduled to take place June 2 through 8 this year.

In an effort to expand its programming and partnerships in the community, Shakespeare Santa Cruz will collaborate with Jewel Theater Company in spring 2013 to co-produce two one-act plays by Harold Pinter.

UC Santa Cruz students are transforming a stark concrete retaining wall at the entrance to College Nine into a striking, colorful mural bearing a message of peace. Painting began this week near the Namaste Lounge. Dedication is set for 12:30-1 p.m. Tuesday, May 29.

Each spring, the UCSC Music Department offers up a major opera production--the only fully staged, live opera presentation in Santa Cruz County. This year it presents composer Mark Adamo's Little Women, based on the popular novel by Louisa May Alcott.

Motivated by the prospect of conserving bat populations and species diversity, UC Santa Cruz researchers are investigating whether antifungal skin microbes can be used to help fight the deadly fungus that is causing a massive die-off of bats in eastern North America.

Adding to the awards for her innovative research into religious minorities, UC Santa Cruz anthropology Ph.D. candidate Sarah Bakker is one of 21 national winners of a coveted fellowship for scholars working on dissertations that involve religious themes.

The 33rd annual Multicultural Festival will take place Saturday, May 19, from noon to 6 p.m. on the Lower West Field - Oakes Lower Lawn at UC Santa Cruz. The band Balance and the Traveling Sounds headlines.

The UC Santa Cruz Demeter Seed Library invites community members from all over Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay Area to its second exchange of 2012, happening on Saturday, May 26 from noon to 3 p.m. at the UCSC Farm.

Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose article "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant," last year revealed his immigration status, will be the keynote speaker at the 9th annual César Chávez Convocation at UCSC.

Two experts investigating ways to reform India's financial system visited UCSC for a workshop on economic systemic risks as they provide technical support to a commission that is advising India's ministry of finance.

Two families, linked by sorrow and promise, met for the first time as the Gabe Zimmerman Memorial Scholarship was presented to Yethzéll Díaz. A panel discussion on Careers with a Conscience followed the ceremony.

Intensive class will provide a solid foundation to further the lifelong study, enjoyment, and practice of organic gardening. Class instructors include Orin Martin, manager of UCSC's Alan Chadwick Garden, and local organic farmers Zoe Hitchner and Sky DeMuro of Everett Family Farm.

Eleven graduate students from UCSC's Digital Arts and New Media M.F.A. Program (DANM) will conclude two years of artistic study with "I've got something on your mind"--an exhibition of their work running April 28 through May 6 at the UCSC Digital Arts and Research Center.

UC Santa Cruz Professor Emeritus of Biology Bill Doyle knows what it’s like to grow up hard.
But the founder and long-term director of UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences, says even though times were tough, those years—especially the ones at Watsonville High—became “the basic, grounding platform” of his life.

UC Santa Cruz has offered admission to 60.5 percent of high school seniors who applied for the fall 2012 quarter, a prospective class that includes more California residents and a higher number of students who would be the first in their family to earn a four-year degree.

UC Santa Cruz environmental studies associate professor Jeff Bury and Adam French, an environmental studies Ph.D. candidate, were among 31 high-altitude scientists and researchers from around the world who traveled to Nepal last September to study and find solutions for destructive glacial floods.

Charles Selberg, who died last month, is remembered by two UCSC alumni, Angela Dracott and Mark Headley. Dracott and Headley were two of the many students on campus who learned fencing (and many other things) from the revered master.

More than 2,500 people showed up for the Museum of Art & History’s “GLOW” festival held in downtown Santa Cruz. Drew Detweiler, a 2010 graduate of UCSC’s DANM program, organized the digital arts portion of the program.

On April 12, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will launch a major exhibition on the Grateful Dead, featuring a significant number of items on loan from The Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz.

UCSC grads will have many opportunities to reminisce at the Natural History Field Quarter 40th Reunion, a Black Alumni Alumni Reunion, an Oakes College’s 40th Anniversary brunch, a Cowell College reunion and the UCSC Class of 2002’s 10-year Reunion.

Four peregrine falcon eggs in a nest at the San Francisco headquarters of PG&E are expected to hatch any day, according to the UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, which has successfully reintroduced peregrine falcons to the wild after the species was nearly decimated 40 years ago.

The nearly 15-acre Forest Ecology Research Plot located within the UC Santa Cruz Campus Natural Reserve has been accepted into the global network of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Tropical Forest Science / Global Earth Observatory.

Discovery of a pair of bald eagles building a nest near Watsonville's Pinto Lake highlights the success of a wildlife conservation effort begun 26 years ago, according to Glenn R. Stewart a UC Santa Cruz alumnus and director of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird (SCPBRG) Research Group at UCSC's Long Marine Lab.

The UC Santa Cruz Institute of Humanities Research will host the 2nd annual gathering of the UC Society of Fellows in the Humanities on April 21, at the Museum of Art and History. A free public event, it will showcase the exceptional research efforts underway in the field of Humanities--both at UCSC and throughout the entire UC system.

A Holocaust survivor and native of Hungary, Peter Kenez is a scholar of the history of Russia and the former Soviet Union. On March 15, he will present the annual UCSC Emeriti Lecture on the topic: “The Coming of the Holocaust.”

The Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California (CCREC), based at UC Santa Cruz, has been awarded a $277,550 grant to conduct a 15-month study on the ethics of research in local communities.

If you were around in the 1960’s, you’re probably familiar with the iconic photos of the Civil Rights movement that made the daily news—images of African Americans being sprayed by firehoses, attacked by dogs, and beaten by police with batons...

The campus has developed a special web site in anticipation of a protest on March 1 that could impact transportation and other services. Please visit the site, which will be updated as information or events warrant.

Finance professor Terrance Odean, an expert on investor behavior, will speak on "The Investor's Worst Enemy," Tuesday, February 28, 2012 from 2-3:30 p.m. in Room 180, the Simularium, in the Engineering 2 building on the UCSC campus. His lecture is free and open to the public.

The Princeton Review has named UC Santa Cruz as one of the top 75 best-value public undergraduate schools in the nation, according to a list published this week in the book "The Best Value Colleges: 2012 Edition."

A new book published by the UCSC Library’s Regional History Project offers a window into the 40-year history of how UC Santa Cruz--and California’s Central Coast—became leaders in the organic farming and sustainable agriculture movement.

As the cost of a University of California education has tripled since 1999, a modest but unique program at UC Santa Cruz has shown remarkable success in helping retain and graduate independent students – former foster youth, wards of the court, homeless youth, orphans, or others who are on their own.

Colleagues in UC Santa Cruz's Division of Arts have prepared the following remembrance of Harold Hardeman (Hardy) Hanson, a beloved member of UCSC's arts community since 1969. Hanson passed away on January 25.

Phillip. L. Hammack, assistant professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, has been named recipient of the 2011 Early Career Award of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Division of Peace Psychology, American Psychological Association (APA).

A book co-written by Barbara Rose Johnston, an occasional lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, has been selected for Outstanding Scholarship in Medical Anthropology by the Society for Medical Anthropology, a division of the American Anthropological Association.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz (SSC) artistic director Marco Barricelli today announced the line-up for the acclaimed UCSC theater company’s 31st season--including the premiere of a new play commissioned by SSC.

Legendary oceanographer, explorer, and author Sylvia Earle will present the sixth Fred Keeley Lecture on Environmental Policy Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. at the UC Santa Cruz Music Recital Hall. Free and open to the public.

Deutron Kebebew (Kresge, ’03, electrical engineering), former foster child and tireless advocate for teens and children, is this year’s winner of the fourth annual Tony Hill Memorial Award.
Kebebew will receive the award as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation on Feb. 2.

Bombings Friday (January 20) struck the northern Nigerian city of Kano where UCSC sociology professor Paul Lubeck conducted research last summer and where many UCSC students have worked as interns as part of the Global Information Internship Program (GIIP).

A free public conference at UC Santa Cruz February 3 and 4 will address the question of "Labor Across the Food System." Scholars, researchers, and activists from California and beyond will gather to discuss the role of labor and social justice in reshaping the contemporary global food system.

Yair Dalal--who creates music that bridges both Arab and Israeli cultures--is coming to campus for both an academic lecture and a public concert, presented by Jewish Studies in collaboration with the Music Department.

More than 40,000 prospective undergraduates – the most ever – have applied for admission to UC Santa Cruz for the fall 2012 quarter. California residents submitted 90 percent of UCSC's freshman applications for fall 2012 – 29,639 – a 13.4 percent increase over 2011, the highest in the UC system.